Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Director Spotlight #7.19: Ridley Scott's Body of Lies

Every month, Director
Spotlight takes a look at an auteur, shines some light on a few items in
the director’s body of work, points out what makes them an artist, and shows
why some of their films work and some don’t. May’s director is the eternally
meticulous Ridley Scott.

Grade: 55 (B-)

Body of Lies is a
perfectly OK spy movie. It features solid performances, a passable script, and
reasonably well-directed action sequences. Why, then, is it such an unsatisfactory
movie? The problem isn’t just that it doesn’t stand out from other spy
thrillers of the era. The problem is that it wasn’t directed by some nobody
Hollywood action director; it was directed by Ridley Scott, a master filmmaker
whose films in the past, even at their weakest, often features unforgettable
sequences, and Body of Lies is
forgettable above all else.

Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a spy in the Middle East working
on bringing down terrorist Al-Saleem. Ferris’ boss, Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe
in his fourth film with Scott) is a blustery CIA man using questionable tactics
in the War on Terror. When Ferris gets in the good grace with Jordanian
Intelligence head Hani-Salaam (Mark Strong), he finds assistance tracking down
Al-Saleem. But things get complicated when he falls for a pretty girl in
Jordan, and Ferris soon doubts who he can really trust in a game of political
intrigue.

Say something for Body of Lies: it’s
slightly more distinctive looking than American
Gangster. Scott’s atmospheric lighting touches come into play a bit more
often than they did in his previous film, almost by necessity considering the
absence of artificial light in most of the film’s locations. The film,
unfortunately, doesn’t have any of the magnetism of Scott’s best films (even
the lightning-quick Black Hawk Down featured
some truly hypnotic moments). Scott is a terrific craftsman, but his
craftsmanship seems to be mostly on cruise-control in this workmanlike film.

The cast, as with American
Gangster, is solid. Oscar Isaac makes a good impression as a doomed
associate of DiCaprio’s, while Mark Strong sells the high-class arrogance of
Hani-Salaam (his frequent pronouncement of “my dear” is a nice touch). The real
scene-stealer in Body of Lies, however,
is Crowe in a juicy supporting role that’s his best non-Gladiator work with Scott. Like Strong’s character, the man is
arrogant, but it’s a more easygoing arrogance of a man who knows he’s in
control and doesn’t need to be in shape or wield a gun to know it. Whenever
Crowe talks down to Hani or convinces Ferris to do something terrible, the film
lights up.

DiCaprio, unfortunately, overplays his part as Roger Ferris. In all
fairness, it’s hard for him to grab onto much when the character basically
feels like a retread of Billy Costigan in The
Departed (also written by William Monahan), nor does the script give him
the necessary reflectiveness on his morally ambiguous deeds except in a few
unconvincing scenes. It doesn’t help that he’s given an unconvincing,
unnecessary love interest. Still, DiCaprio doesn’t sell the existential dread
of the character nearly as well as he has in other films (The Departed, Shutter Island, Inception).

The film is a bit of a continuation of screenwriter William Monahan’s
interest in political and moral ambiguity in both religious conflict (as in the
superior Kingdom of Heaven) and
modern technological war on crime/terror (The
Departed). But neither Monahan nor Scott explore much of what these webs of
lies and secrecies mean, aside from fairly vague pronouncements about
untrustworthy governments. At the end of the day, it’s nothing that the Bourne movies or other spy thrillers
haven’t done before, and better. Body of
Lies feels like every spy movie ever made. Coming from two major talents
like Scott and Monahan, that’s a damn shame.

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